Dana Priest - Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State

Copyright 2011 by Dana Priest and William Arkin

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: September 2011

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ISBN: 978-0-316-19404-4

Investigative reporter Dana Priest has worked at the Washington Post for nearly twenty-five years, covering intelligence, the military, national health care reform, and local news. She has traveled overseas on various reporting assignments, including with Special Operations Forces on training missions, with army troops on peacekeeping deployments, and, in 2000, with the regional combatant commanders in charge of U.S. military operations around the world.

Priest has won every major journalism award, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for public service for The Other Walter Reed and the 2006 Pulitzer for beat reporting for her work on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas. Her 2003 book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with Americas Military (W. W. Norton), was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. She lives in Washington, DC.

William M. Arkin has been a columnist for the Washington Post and washingtonpost.com since 1998. He was an army intelligence analyst in West Berlin in the 1970s. Since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, he has conducted bomb damage assessments on the ground in Iraq, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Eritrea, visiting more than eight hundred targets and briefing his findings to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the CIA, the air force, and others.

Arkin was an adviser to a United Nations fact-finding mission to Israel and Lebanon and a consultant on Iraq to the office of the U.N. Secretary-General. He has worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace. He has taught at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, U.S. Air Force, Maxwell AFB, Alabama; and been a fellow at both the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and the Center for Strategic Education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He lives in Vermont.

The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with Americas Military

Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War

Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World

Operation Iraqi Freedom: 22 Historic Days in Words and Pictures with Marc Kusnetz, Gen. Montgomery Meigs (USA, Ret.), and Neal Shapiro

The U.S. Military Online: A Directory for Internet Access to the Department of Defense

Encyclopedia of the U.S. Military with Joshua Handler, Julie A. Morrissey, and Jacquelyn Walsh

Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume IV: Soviet Nuclear Weapons with Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, and Jeffrey I. Sands

Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume III: U.S. Nuclear Warhead Facility Profiles with Thomas B. Cochran, Milton M. Hoenig, and Robert S. Norris

Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume II: U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production with Thomas B. Cochran, Milton M. Hoenig, and Robert S. Norris

Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race

Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume I: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities with Thomas B. Cochran and Milton M. Hoenig

Research Guide to Current Military and Strategic Affairs

From Dana: To Bill, Nick, Haley, Shirley,
and Ken for their love and humor, and to the late Banksy Priest
for keeping me company for so many hours every day

From Bill: To Rikki and Hannah,
and Luciana, my love with no time line

CENTCOM (Central Command): A unified command of the Defense Department, headquartered at MacDill AFB. CENTCOM manages U.S. troops and military operations in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency): The CIA, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, collects, evaluates, and disseminates information on political, military, economic, scientific, and other developments abroad. Its spies collect intelligence on threats to U.S. interests, among them terrorism, weapons proliferation and development, international drug trafficking and criminal syndicates, and foreign espionage.

CIPFIN (Defense Critical Infrastructure Program for Finance): A database and element of the Defense Critical Infrastructure Program that identifies and assesses the security of physical assets, cyberassets, and infrastructures in the public and private sectors that are essential to national security.

DHS (Department of Homeland Security): Established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, DHS came into existence on January 24, 2003. It is in charge of developing and coordinating a comprehensive national strategy to strengthen the United States against terrorist threats or attacks. It includes the Transportation Safety Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (formerly the INS).

DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency): The largest producer and manager of foreign military intelligence for the Department of Defense. It is one of sixteen members of the U.S. intelligence community. The DIA director is the primary adviser to the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on military intelligence matters. It manages the Defense Attach program.

DNI (Director of National Intelligence): A cabinet-level position, the DNI is a sort of intelligence czar whose role is to coordinate all sixteen agencies and departments that make up the intelligence community. The DNI is the principal adviser to the president and the National Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security. The DNI also oversees and directs the implementation of the National Intelligence Program. In reality, the power of the DNI has depended less on the definition given in the legislation than on the title holders relationship to the president and to the heads of the various intelligence agencies.

DoD (Department of Defense): An executive department headed by the secretary of defense. The DoD is responsible for providing, organizing, and managing the military forces needed to prevent and fight wars and protect the security of the United States. The major elements of these forces are the army, the navy, the Marine Corps, and the air force, consisting of about 1.3 million men and women on active duty. They are backed, in case of emergency, by the 825,000 members of the reserves and National Guard. In addition, there are about 600,000 civilian employees in the DoD.

DOHA (Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals): A component of the Defense Legal Services Agency of the Defense Department that provides legal adjudication and claims decisions in personnel security clearance cases for contractor personnel doing classified work as well as for the Defense Department and twenty other federal agencies and departments.

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation): The primary federal law enforcement agency responsible for counterterrorism investigations and federal crimes within the United States. Its director holds a cabinet-level position.